KINEMATICS OF THE GANOS FAULT, NW TURKEY: IMPLICATIONS LATERAL EXTRUSION OF THE ANATOLIAN BLOCK SINCE LATE MIOCENE

Ganos Fault, is a right lateral strike-slip fault, represents the further western segment of the dextral North Anatolian Fault Zone and has about 100 km length. It is namely the Gaziköy-Saros segment and connects the western Marmara Sea and Aegean Sea in continent around the Gulf of Saros. Ganos Fault has been active both in historical and instrumental periods. Historical earthquakes (M>6) occurred in 542, 824, 1063, 1343, 1344, 1354, 1542 and 1766. Besides in last century, 1912 Mürefte (M=7,3) earthquake occurred on the Ganos Fault was the largest and most destructive. The aim of this study is to present the kinematic characteristics of the Ganos Fault. According to kinematic measurements on fault planes and some earthquake focal mechanism solutions, Ganos Fault is regarded as an active and right lateral strike-slip fault with a normal component. Kinematic analysis results or inversions of these fault-slip data show an active transtensional tectonic regime and presented the maximum horizontal stress (σ₁) axis as NW-SE and minimum horizontal stress (σ₃) axis as NE-SW. Rm value is smaller than 0.5. This result is thought to be related with the continental collision in eastern Anatolia, slab-pull forces on African plate in SW Turkey and combined effect of the Anatolian extrusion to the west since late Miocene time.